


Somewhere, Estragon

by wildes



Category: The Mighty Boosh (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-05
Updated: 2014-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-11 05:48:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1169421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildes/pseuds/wildes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Howard drags Vince along to meet his hero. It's a long wait.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somewhere, Estragon

**Author's Note:**

> Right, so, I read Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot, and I absolutely loved it. It's brilliant, and by writing this I'm not doing him any justice. Anyway, I couldn't get the idea of how similar the characters of Vladimir and Estragon are to those of Howard and Vince out of my head, and I had to write this. Everything is heavily based on Waiting for Godot. You don't need to have read the play to read this, but I recommend you do. It's fantastic.

”Can’t we just go?” Vince asks, fiddling with his hair. Howard looks at him for a long moment before answering, takes in the muddy clothes and the mess of a hair. Howard had known that bringing Vince along to this trip was going to affect him, but he hadn’t imagined it to be so bad. The smudged remains of Vince's eyeliner make his eyes look dark and demanding, unpredictable. “I just want to go, Howard.”

Howard sits down beside his friend in the mud. His multipurpose tweed utility suit has seen worse things than a bit of wet ground, after all. He lays a hand on Vince’s shoulder.

“You know we can’t go, Vince. We’re waiting for –“

“What? You keep telling me but I don’t get it. So it’s a hero of yours, can’t he come down to visit you? In the flat? Over a cup of tea?” Vince shoots him an ugly look and shakes Howard’s hand off his shoulder. “If he’s as great as you let on, he wouldn’t make us wait in this place.” Vince looks around and a visible shiver runs through his body.

Howard doesn’t have an answer for that, so he dodges the question. He admits that their surroundings are nothing short of gloomy. It’s just mud and an endless nothingness. The only thing in sight is a short, pale-looking tree near-by that seems to be mocking them. 

“Don’t be like that, little man,” Howard says, and puts his hand on Vince’s shoulder once more, happy to find that Vince isn’t shaking it away this time. Instead it seems like he’s leaning closer, the ends of his hair tickling Howard’s neck. “He will come, he told us to wait for him here. Tomorrow, tomorrow he’ll come.”

"And then we can go home?" Vince asks hopefully, curling his long fingers around Howard's wrist, his thumb rubbing Howard's pulse point.

"And then we can go home." Howard confirms. He tries to remember what home looks like but his brain comes up with nothing, his eyes darting to Vince instead. Maybe they never had a home. Maybe it was just the two of them instead, always. He doesn't voice his thoughts, careful not to upset Vince any further.

"I wonder how the shop is doing," he says instead, hoping to cheer Vince up. He remembers the shop.

"What shop?" Vince says. “He’s clearly insane, your friend,” he mutters. “I don’t know if I want anything to do with him.”

A silence falls and stretches on between them. Vince snuggles closer to Howard as the evening grows cooler. He smells of dirt and the remains of copious amounts of hair product.

“Maybe you should have come here alone,” Vince whispers when the stars start to show. It’s barely audible but Howard hears him bright as day, and a deep pain goes through his gut like a lightning. “I think it would have been better.”

Howard tightens his grip on Vince. “I would never have come back,” he says firmly.

Vince doesn’t seem to have a reply to that. He’s shivering slightly and Howard is overwhelmed by a sudden urge to run his hand through Vince’s hair, so he does, and Vince closes his eyes. “Maybe it would have been better,” Vince says, but it lacks any real venom, and it doesn’t hurt. Something warm bubbles inside Howard’s belly.

*

They wake up to a sound, but if asked later neither of them could tell what the sound was exactly or where it came from. Vince rubs his eyes violently and climbs off from where he had been sleeping half on top of Howard. 

“What are we going to do?” he asks, a shaken, terrified look in his eyes.

Howard sighs. “We’ve been over this,” he says. “We are waiting for –“

“What is this place?” Vince asks and looks around wildly.

“Calm down, Vince,” Howard says and stands up with difficulty. He reaches out to touch Vince’s hand, but as he leans forward Vince flinches violently and stumbles backwards. “Please, sit down here with me.”

“Why?”

“It’ll pass the time,” Howard says softly and sits himself down.

It takes a few moments, and a stubborn remark of "The time will pass anyway," but before long Vince comes back and sits down next to him. He buries his head into his hands and flinches as Howard tries to touch him.

“Don’t be like that,” Howard says. “Come on, Vince.”

“I must be cursed,” Vince says in a little voice, leaning in for a hug. Howard kisses his neck softly. “Stuck here with you.” Vince clings to Howard tight. “Why can’t we just go?”

Howard doesn’t reply, just holds the smaller man in his arms. “Are you happy?” he asks eventually, sweeping some of Vince’s raven-black hair back behind his ear.

“Happy?” Vince asks, like he doesn’t know what it means.

It hurts, but it doesn’t change anything. They have to keep waiting, that’s all Howard knows, and holding Vince in his arms, he’s not sure there is anywhere he would rather be.

They kiss softly, lie back on the ground and look at the grey sky.

“What are we going to do?” Vince asks.

“We’re waiting,” Howard replies.


End file.
